Potsdam

Schloß Sanssouci. Pleasure palace of Prussian King Friedrich II (Frederick the Great), constructed between 1745 and 1747. It sits in the 700-acre Parc Sanssouci - on the western side of Potsdam, and also begun by Friedrich - and was the first of several palaces and royal residences constructed around the park in the 18th and 19th centuries. Friedrich generally resided there from April to October each year.

 

 

Orangerieschloß. Constructed between 1851 and 1860 by Prussian King Wilhelm IV, as a guest house at Parc Sanssouci - primarily for his sister and her husband, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.

 

Neues Palais. Constructed between 1763 and 1769 by Friedrich II as a formal guest palace.

 

Friedenskirche. Constructed between 1845 and 1848 by Wilhelm IV, and based on Rome's San Clemente Church. The mosaic on the apse dome (lower photo) is 12th-century, and it originally was in the church of San Capriano on Murano Island in Venice. 

 

18th-century mill (reconstruction, 1993).

Holländisches Viertel (Dutch Quarter). Constructed between 1733 and 1742 by Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I as a settlement for Dutch artisans invited by the King to work in Potsdam.

July 4th in Berlin



I did a little Berlin touring on US Independence Day, taking the S-Bahn to a stop where I never had been, then walking through the Tiergarten and visiting the Siegessäule (Victory Column) for the first time (I had been past it, but never actually gone into it.)

 

Heidelberger Platz U-Bahn station

 

 

Die Siegessäule was completed in 1873, and it commemorates the Prussian victories in the Danish-Prussian War (1864), Austro-Prussian War (1866) and Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), which led to the creation of the modern state of Germany in 1871. It originally stood in front of the Reichstag, but the Nazis moved it to its current location in the Tiergarten.

 

Detail of the bronze freeze on the base. Prussian troops returning to Berlin from France in 1871.

 

That's Bismarck on the center-left.

 

The foundation stone in the center of the base.

 

Germania, in the mosaic which encircles the upper, columned portion of the base.

 

Victory, from the top of the Column.

Straße des 17. Juni, looking toward the Brandenburg Gate.

The Spree, Charité Hospital and the Chancellery.

Potsdamer Platz.

In the Tiergarten.